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How AI Is Changing the Events Industry in 2018

Feb 22,2018

By: Saija Mahon

Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be the next big thing, from driverless cars to revolutionary marketing tools. Essentially defined as computers that can learn beyond their programming, AI has moved out of the realm of science fiction and into down-to-earth business agendas. So what can it offer the events industry in 2018?

Matches Made in Cyber Heaven

No, we’re not talking about dating agencies, but matching up attendees at a large event. For instance, if you organize a large networking event, you want your thousands of attendees to be able to meet the right people.

Traditionally, this has been done by manually collating questionnaires. It’s a time-consuming process for organizer and client alike, but an AI can scan existing information, such as social media posts, and calculate matches. These can be put to the attendee, who’ll accept or reject them, helping the AI learn how to make future recommendations even more targeted.

Matching Needs to Resources

If you organize a large event, how do you predict how much food, drink or crowd control you need? If you get it wrong, you risk either wasting money or disappointing attendees — or, if you don’t have enough crowd control, seeing your event descend into chaos.

If you let an AI track registration and footfall, on the other hand, it can calculate exactly what you need in real time. You can make sure resources are always at the optimal level.

The Information They Need

Have you ever attended a business show and missed something you really wanted to catch because you had to search through a confusing program for the information? And, if you go to the information point, everyone else has had the same idea.

How much easier would have been if, instead, you’d downloaded an app that linked you to an AI with all the information at its virtual fingertips? We’re used to voice-activated personal assistants like Cortana, Siri or Alexa, and a dedicated assistant for your event would make everything run more smoothly.

Events and AI in 2018

Most event organizers aren’t using AI at the moment, but we’re likely to be seeing a lot more of it by the end of 2018. There are problems, of course. Building an AI department is a prohibitively long and expensive process, so most people will hire an outside provider — and that means making sure the provider you hire knows what they’re doing.

You’re welcome to get in touch with us for advice about using AI to organize your events.